1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to the construction of a windshield wiper for which the wipe angle may be varied, and the automatic park positions of the arm and blade may be selected and adjusted to provide very precise parking without the need for interchanging or replacing parts and, thereby, providing a means for producing one basic wiper construction for varied applications at a feasible cost.
2. Description of Prior Art:
Various types of windshield wipers are known where the rotating armature of an electric motor is converted to an oscillating motion that is provided to swing the arm and blade across a predetermined sector of a windshield. The conversion of rotary to oscillating motion is usually accomplished by various crank arms, gears and linkages. It is further well known to incorporate a park switch to automatically provide for parking the arm and blade at or near an end of travel of the wiper arm and blade as it travels across the windshield. The difficulty arising in the system of prior art involves the necessity to customize the wiper unit to meet the needs of each individual type of vehicle by producing special parts to provide the specific requirements for a given type vehicle. The varying requirements from application to application include variations in parking positions; for example, right or left side and the specified number of degrees from the end of travel. The number of degrees through which the arm and blade are required to travel during operation is another requirement. These special parts for each application may be low in volume and, therefore, higher in cost as compared to the remaining common parts that are produced in a much larger volume. Further, the presence of these special parts cause problems in stocking, inventory and associated paperwork.